The present invention generally relates to a copying apparatus and more particularly, to a compact manual copying apparatus of a handy or portable type arranged to manually scan the surface of an original document by an image reading means during an original document reading work, and also to manually scan the surface of a transfer material, e.g., a copy paper, by a printing means during a printing work.
Commonly, in a copying apparatus to be installed at a predetermined position, including a compact desk-top type copying apparatus or the like, transfer material is transported by a transport means such as a belt or rollers, and the minimum size of the transfer material or copy paper sheet to be transported, is limited to a size of a name card and the like, while for large members, such as an original document, platform, a photoreceptor, etc. are essentially required, since electrophotography is generally adopted as the copying apparatus. Accordingly, in the copying apparatuses of the installation type, there are limitations to the reduction in size of the transfer paper, compact size of the apparatus, and cost reduction in the manufacture of the copying apparatus.
In order to overcome the disadvantages as described above, there has conventionally been proposed a portable type manual copying apparatus which is so arranged that an image reading means and a printing means provided within the apparatus are subjected to manual scanning on the surfaces of an original document and a transfer material or copy paper sheet, whereby the copying operation may be readily effected through employment of a small-sized original document or transfer material which can not be independently transferred or copied by the installation type copying apparatus referred to earlier.
However, in the known manual copying apparatus of the above described type, there are none that have been arranged to maintain a constant contact pressure between the printing portion of the printing means and the transfer material. Therefore, the contact pressure between the printing portion and the transfer material is altered due to variation in the force to be applied to the apparatus during the manual scanning, resulting in the deterioration in the state of image formation due to non-uniformity in the image density. Meanwhile, in the case where an excessive force is accidentally applied to the apparatus, there is the possibility that the printing portion will be undesirably damaged.
Moreover, in the conventional manual copying apparatus as described above, since no platform is provided for holding the original document or copy paper, the copying apparatus main body must be subjected to the manual scanning by one hand, while the original document or copy paper is being held by the other hand. Therefore, in the case where an image is to be printed on transfer material of a particularly small size, it is difficult to move the copying apparatus for scanning in a correct direction with respect to the transfer material, thus also inviting deterioration in the state of image formation, such as inclination of the copied image, missing of part of the image, etc.
Furthermore, the known manual copying apparatus as described above is particularly poor in the scanning performance when the image is to be formed on a transfer material the width thereof in a direction perpendicular to the scanning direction being narrower than the width of the copying apparatus main body, and the copying apparatus can not be displaced in a proper direction, also resulting in a deterioration in the state of image formation as referred to above.